After Everything Else (Book 2): Creeper Following Read online

  Creeper Following

  By Brett D. Houser

  Text Copyright ©2013

  Brett D. Houser

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Image Copyright ©2013

  Darren Taylor

  All Rights Reserved

  For everyone who supports me and helps me to grow my soul. My wife, my family, my friends, and especially the people who don’t know me well but encourage me anyway. Thank you.

  The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. – Kurt Vonnegut

  Introduction

  The world has changed. Corpses walk the roads attacking the few living, spreading the contagion that drives them. Among the living are Sonya, Chase, and Marilyn. They travel with a golden retriever name Honey. While Chase and Marilyn are simply trying to stay alive, Sonya has an additional goal: reach Florida and begin searching for her father. Chase and Marilyn support Sonya in this quest, although none of them are sure there can be any level of success. But it is a reason. A reason to keep going.

  Sonya is fifteen years old, an only child from Omaha, Nebraska. Her mother died of cancer when Sonya was ten, and she depends on her father for her emotional well-being. A loner and an outsider by choice, she is learning to trust Chase and Marilyn more each day. She provides the group with purpose.

  Chase, from St. Louis, is seventeen and from a wealthy home where there is no real sense of family. Despite this, he became a well-liked person at his high school and a natural leader. Before the onset of the plague which killed most of the population and then caused the dead to walk, he was ready to begin his senior year in high school as quarterback for the football team. He was not unaffected by his home situation, though. While he had many people who called him friend, he felt close to no one. Now as he grows closer to Sonya and Marilyn, he understands more about himself and what has been missing in his life. He acts as leader, but only through the consent of the others.

  Marilyn is from a solid home and a good family in southeast Missouri, and the loss of that home affects her deeply. She is deeply spiritual, and this as well as the support from Sonya and Chase has sustained her through much of what has happened. A skilled survivor, hunter, and forager, she feels deeply the loss of her family. She is in many ways both the most capable and the most vulnerable of the group.

  They joined together and learned the walking corpses, which they call creepers, are not the only danger in the new world. On their journey they discovered the Chief, a survivalist with an agenda to rebuild, but on his terms. He wanted to build a new world. He accepted Chase and Marilyn, but Sonya did not meet his ideals, so he attempted to remove her from the picture. Chase and Marilyn came to her rescue, and they all barely escaped with their lives. Their quest has them travelling down through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama on their way to Florida. The death of everyone they knew and their experience with the Chief has changed them, toughened them. But they haven’t seen the worst the world after everything else has to offer. This new world holds horrors beyond their imagining.

  Part One: If In A Lonely Place

  Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.

  Tecumseh

  Chapter 1 – Sonya

  In Huntsville the streets were full of creepers, some streets more than others. They travelled for blocks and the roadway were almost empty, but then they would come to an intersection and the creepers would be so thick Chase would have to take to the adjoining parking lots to make his way through. Even in the parking lots he was often knocking down and running over creepers. Sonya shuddered each time. She was afraid she would never get used to the idea that these were no longer people. They looked too much like people. Some of them, anyway.

  She kept reminding herself that creepers were just creepers. They were dead. They once had been people, still looked mostly like people, they walked around like people, but they weren’t people. They were just a problem to be dealt with. The fungus inside them was the only reason they were moving, but even knowing that wasn’t enough to help sometimes.

  The worst ones were the ones that looked almost normal. Their color was wrong, but they were still dressed, no real signs of falling apart. Sonya would catch sight of them from the corner of her eye and think, “It’s a person!” Then a closer look would show the solid white eyes and the blackened tongue and the feeling that followed got her every time. Of course, the saddest were the children. The fungus showed no respect for age.

  The ones in advanced stages of decay, with clothing torn, exposed skulls, rotted skin sliding from deteriorating muscle: those were monsters and putting them down was no issue.

  When they had to slow, the creepers converged on them. All the creepers they encountered turned toward the passing Suburban and would begin to move toward the vehicle. Chase continued to press forward. The cars in the roadway and parking lots were stopped haphazardly, requiring him to constantly look ahead to ensure they could get through. Sonya dreaded the time when there was no way out, when they would be surrounded by the creepers and they couldn’t run over the massive number of corpses piling up around them. Then what? Sit in the vehicle? But Chase always managed to find a way out.

  “How do we get out of this town? So many creepers. So many stalled cars. I’m sick and tired of creepers and stalled cars.” Chase grumbled non-stop to himself. This didn’t alarm Sonya, but his appearance did. He was tense. She could see the tendons standing out in his wrists, on his neck. She knew she couldn’t take over for him. Marilyn might have, but the chance of him allowing her to take on that responsibility was slim.

  Sonya envied Marilyn. Not only was she tall, strong, and able to kick butt, but she seemed to have made peace with killing the creepers. Marilyn also seemed to be able to accept Chase’s need to be in control, to drive, to make sure everyone else was okay without worrying about himself. Sonya turned to look at her. The older girl was asleep across the backseat, one arm thrown over Honey, the dog, who looked back at Sonya. Marilyn doted on Honey, always looking for treats for the golden retriever and making sure she was comfortable.

  Sonya turned back to the front, watching Chase out of the corner of her eye. His short blond hair was getting longer. He hadn’t shaved, but he didn’t have much in the whisker department. He was looking less like Captain America every day, but to her he was looking more like a hero. Chase was always taking charge, always wanting the responsibility, and always blaming himself when something went wrong. She worried about him.

  The cars and the creepers did seem to be going on forever. Just when she thought they were through, they would come to another intersection, another group of creepers, another situation full of stress. Then, at last, the buildings and houses began to thin. At last, the creepers weren’t congregated at every crossroad. They passed a Greyhound station, a Lowe’s, some warehouses. They had a touchy moment on a bridge, but without the pressure of the creepers constantly coming after them, they were able to stop and think their way through the problem and get out and scout ahead a little. Chase still wasn’t able to get the Suburban over thirty, but at least they were moving steadily.

  The next few days were a trial in frustration. Each day was a battle of finding roads that weren’t blocked by traffic jams, accidents, abandoned police or National Guard road blocks, or
worst of all, immense hordes of creepers. They stumbled across the atlas Sonya had found just before the encounter with the Chief (she felt it had been a long time ago, but it had only been a few days), but it wasn’t as helpful as they would have liked. They considered finding a GPS, but didn’t know if it would even be helpful. Maybe they could find one that had been updated recently, but Chase had sarcastically pointed out they weren’t likely to find one programmed to avoid creeper stampedes.

  So they had stayed to secondary roads. The first day they covered quite a bit of ground toward Florida, but the next day was full of dead-ends and switchbacks. The odometer might show two hundred miles and the gas tank might be close to empty, but a look at the map revealed they had really only moved fifteen miles toward their goal. Between dodging, rerouting, and the slow pace they had to maintain, they had essentially wasted an entire day and most of a tank of gas. Obtaining gas was another issue. There were plenty of vehicles to siphon from, but it took time. They next day was no better, and toward nightfall they were still in Alabama.

  Alabama was just confusing. The sheer number of back-roads available caused them to loop and circle. They avoided large towns as much as possible, although that didn’t keep them from running into large groups of creepers. Sonya pictured the creepers spreading from areas of high population outward like ripples on a pond. In the strangest areas there would be large groups of them shambling along together, and when two or more of these ripples intersected, undead confusion reigned.

  At a crossroads in almost the middle of nowhere, somewhere south of I-20 but north of I-85, they crested a small rise on a mostly flat road. They had just passed a sign that said “Roanoke 5 mi,” and were debating if it was too big to approach when Chase brought the Suburban to a stop, the anti-lock brakes making the vehicle shudder. A half mile ahead, milling around a Burger King and a convenience store, what appeared to be a thousand or more creepers completely blocked the road. Chase stopped far enough back that the staggering corpses had not turned their attention to them. They stared, and no one said anything. They had seen thousands, maybe tens of thousands creepers since beginning their quest, but this was the largest collection of creepers they had seen in one place. At each interstate they had crossed, there had been creepers strung out as far the eye could see, but never clustered like this. These appeared to be confused by their own sheer numbers.

  Sonya peered at the crowd through some binoculars she had liberated from an Army surplus store they had raided on the outskirts of Talladega. She watched as one corpse charged another that had become entangled in a barbed wire fence. When the charger approached closely enough, it seemed to realize the dead nature of the flailing creeper and stopped. Then it turned and ambled off. Scenes like this were repeated over and over again as she watched. She scanned the crowd slowly. There were walkers, lurchers, and even some very badly damaged crawlers dragging legs which had lost usefulness by mishap or decay.

  “If it’s like this here,” Marilyn said quietly in the backseat, “can you imagine closer to big cities?”

  Sonya, who had ridden last summer with her dad up the east coast and been slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, shuddered. She had a thought. “Everybody who died…do they all get up and become creepers? So if the population of a town is, I don’t know, fifteen thousand, does that mean there are 15,000 creepers?” Chase turned to look at her. “I mean, think about it. That’s a lot of corpses. All those nasty dead people walking around. Flies, maggots, rot…it just seems like we should be overrun completely.”

  Chase said, “I read once on one of those interesting fact lists that if the entire population of the world stood shoulder to shoulder, they would fill the area of Los Angeles. So, that’s pretty big, but not when compared to the United States. And if the fungus’ purpose is to spread out, that means there’s a lot of ground to cover. They’ll start out packed pretty tight, but then they’ll spread out. There may be some pockets like this here and there, but eventually things will start getting even.

  “I also have to think that if we’re alive, there may be quite a few like us. The Chief might have been right about that. There may be a lot of people who are immune to the airborne form. But they’re going to be in trouble. The people in the cities will really be in trouble. So I’d say, no, some people may just die from accidents, hunger, disease. Some people will be infected by being bitten later than the first group who got it from the airborne form. I just have to wonder what comes next. The Chief told me about the ants. The fungus made them climb to the right level in the forest. This fungus has to be a little more complex. What will it make the creepers do next?”

  Chapter 2 – Marilyn

  Marilyn had made the back seat hers. Funny how that worked out. In her family, as the oldest, the front seat was her right and she defended that right. Now she preferred the back seat. Part of it was deference to Sonya and what she had been through. The rest was preference. She liked being in the back with Honey, who was still suffering from the effects of her treatment at the hands of the Chief, but she also didn’t really want the constant reminders of the world they were in now. She could retreat into meditation more easily because she was not required to be vigilant. Now more than ever she felt the need to put her faith in God and God’s plan, whatever it may be. Her faith was tested every time she witnessed one of the abominations that the other two called creepers. She knew they were only flesh, but they tested her faith, anyway.

  After finding the first pocket of creepers and backtracking their way around, they had continued on. They had come across creepers again and again, but usually in only ones or twos, or even in small groups. Nothing like that large horde. Marilyn knew it was only a matter of time before they came across another large group, probably even a larger group. She tried to imagine Florida. Backwoods Alabama was a good place to be. When they got down into Florida, things would only get worse. There were a lot of people in Florida. She wanted to regret her decision to come with them, but what else would she have done? Gone off on her own? Even had she wanted to, staying with the Chief had not been an option. There was no room there for her except as breeding stock. Her beliefs would have separated her.

  The days passed. They raided stores as they needed food. Convenience store food was always available, and they had found MREs and dehydrated food at the Army surplus store. She still could find something for them to eat if all else failed, and sometimes that was better than anything else. There were plants she recognized here and there. Curly dock, poke salat, purslane, chickweed, and dandelions. The dandelions were starting to get a little bitter, though. One day they stopped beside a lake and caught bluegill that she cooked in tin foil over a fire. They weren’t great without butter, but she stuffed them with wood sorrel before wrapping them and that helped. She thought about hunting, but it was spring. Even though there was no one to enforce the season, she didn’t want to kill something that might have babies somewhere. Only when there were no other options would she risk that.

  After a week, they were still in Alabama. Some days were better than others. There had been the good day when they had stopped by the lake with an open field nearby and no creepers to be seen at first. Honey, who seemed to have made a full recovery, had run in large circles, playing in an open field near where they stopped for lunch. The best day would have been a day with no creepers, but sadly, there had been no days without creepers. On the day Honey had run, she had stopped in the middle of playing and stared into a nearby copse of trees. Moments later, a creeper had emerged, shambling toward them. They had hurriedly packed and left. At the lake, before the creeper ruined it, she thought she might just tell Chase and Sonya to go on, that she would be okay by herself. She played out a fantasy in her mind where she set up camp for the summer and just lived there by the lake. She thought that even when winter came, she could probably take care of herself, even though that might mean having to go back to raiding stores more often and that meant more creeper interaction.

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; But it was just a fantasy. As difficult as it was staying with Chase and Sonya, it was still where she needed to be. She knew that God had put her with them for a reason. And she did care for both of them. She wanted to see them where they wanted to be, and safe there. After that, she didn’t know. But that was life now, the not knowing. So she rode along. At mealtimes, they looked to her, either to open a can or to begin gathering. And they each talked to her alone. They confided their fears in her. She listened, but she didn’t tell her fears to them. She told her fears to God. Then, on about their seventh day in Alabama, that changed.

  “Where are we again?” Chase asked for the seventeenth time that morning. Marilyn was watching out the window. There were few creepers out on this road, and the countryside was green and beautiful. The amount of frustration coming from the front seat had raised the tension in the Suburban to the point that she could neither sleep nor meditate.

  “I don’t know,” said Sonya, the atlas held up close to her face. “Why did you get off on such a small road? It’s not even on here.”

  “It was either that or backtrack. Or try to plow through about thirty of them. I’m tired of backtracking, I’m tired of running them down, and I’m sure tired of Alabama!” Chase braked hard. A tree was down across the single-lane blacktop they were on. He got out, but he didn’t go to the tree right away. It was a large tree, and it stretched from the forest on the left side of the road to the forest on the right side of the road. No way around. He opened the back of the Suburban and said, “I’m declaring lunch time. And after that, maybe a nap.” Marilyn knew it hadn’t been even two hours since breakfast, but there were no protests. This was beginning to look like another day wasted, and if it was going to be wasted, they might as well try to enjoy it.